Riddikulus!

In the inimitable J. K. Rowling's Prisoner of Azkaban, Professor Lupin takes his Defense Against the Dark Arts class on a short field trip from their usual dungeon classroom to Hogwart's version of a Teachers' Lounge**,where a boggart has taken up residence in an old armoire.

A boggart, in case you have forgotten, is a shape-shifter. It assumes the appearance of whatever its viewer most fears.

Neville Longbottom, for instance, most fears Professor Snape. Harry Potter is terrified by Dementors. Ron Weasley is distressed by spiders.

Gathered around the wobbling wardrobe, Professor Lupin prepares his class: So the boggart sitting in the darkness within has not yet assumed a form. He does not yet know what will frighten the person on the other side of the door. Nobody knows what a boggart looks like when he is alone, but when I let him out, he will immediately become whatever each of us most fears.

To defeat the nightmarish boggart, each aspiring wizard must project onto their fear some farcical aspect, something funny, something silly. Neville imagines the intimidating Snape to be dressed in his grandmother's stuffed vulture hat, long green dress, and a fox-fur scarf -- the look completed by her signature big red handbag.

The charm to repel a boggart is, of course, Riddikulus!

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This morning, in the process of sorting through old files, I came across a few draft chapters of a book that I don't remember writing.

I have been guilty, in the past, of claiming authorship where none was warranted. First there was that Jacques Prévert poem, Les paris stupides, followed by the sordid Beatrice Ravenel affair and my conviction that her poem, Fear, was actually my own.

There's no doubt about it this time, though -- the prose is voluble, excessive, relentless: it's me, all right, inflicting those words.

My unfinished novel was tucked in among a bunch of my academic fits-and-starts. In final form, it might have been a mystery. A real whodunnit.

I think it is sometimes overlooked, that the general, overarching requirement for a doctorate is to publish "an original contribution to human knowledge."

That's the horror story nestled in the heart of academia, and my personal boggart.

When the message is that simple (by which I mean complex) exegesis just won't do. The mind reels before the shrinking chasm of The Original. Yes, that was always my cocktail party, ready-to-wear remark: some witty allusion as to how the task becomes more difficult with each passing day. In my field, at least, The Original is surely shrinking. This, of course, explains some of the stranger juxtapositions among the disciplines and excuses the postmodern tendency of criticism to be literature, and, therefore, its own object.

{rolling::eyes}

I mean, if I had not been allowed to pervert science to my needs, creating a kind of scientistic discourse of Pure Woo? There'd have been no game theory, no long thoughts on chance, no way to decently drag Duchamp and chess into my narrative to render my writing on Leiris that much more... original; I'd not have been able to pass off a nodding acquaintance with sociology's group structure theory and thermodynamic notions of entropy as an original analysis of the graffiti so ubiquitous in the Paris of May 1968. [We all know that the energy being degraded was my own!]

Original? Without doubt. Worthy? Worth any little teeny bit of while? Not really!

Is there any relationship between my obsessional pursuit of The (publishable) Original and the frenetic style over which I seem to have no control? Am I really so ruled by The Poofy Hat? (Some prize the hood in their academic regalia -- I go cuckoo for the doctoral tam!)

Riddikulus!

***** ** ***** ** ***** ** ***** ** ***** ** ***** ** ***** ** ***** **

Here, have a taste of the suspense novel I don't remember starting (but had the good sense not to finish). I've removed anything that speaks directly to plot, as the story line is almost good and maybe worth developing. You know, the next time I decide to knuckle down and write from within a fugue state.

The working title:

I reject the cruciform

With a simple refocusing of the eye, I reject the simple white cruciform, trite and true. Dogwood blossoms are too easy. They are also too hard, also at the same time. O, odious redundancies! That's me: Sweet Tea Back Porch Southern Zen all over the place, uh-huh. I rummage through my Rubbermaid container, pull out a purple pencil. It should probably be coded “lilac” in perfumed italics, or even “lavender” in a gothic font, but no, it is a simple cheap purple pencil, unlabeled.

One requires the right tool for the right job. This morning, the first without my chipped San Diego Zoo Mountain Gorilla mug of viscous caffeine coffee, this morning, I sketch in luxuriant malice. My purple pencil is a perfect match for tracing the circles of succulent wisteria just outside the window. Wisteria, this morning, serves as the ideal for decaffeinated artistic malignancy. Metaphor for, you know. None of this is truly shocking; I am not avant-garde; My rage is tame. I am easily amused. This is called being finger-down-the-throat cutesy and since my tolerance for nonsense is low, I don’t alarm myself. If only my desire for the genuine java bean were not so great. The mug that a long ago muscled lover bought me has never been washed, because he, in his sophistication, taught that suds would bruise the flavor. Of what use is this mug now? Perhaps I will scrub it with granules of Ajax, leave it to soak in Clorox. Should I warm to a puckishly Earth Mama role, I could root a sweet potato or an avocado in it with the multicolored fancy toothpicks we somehow keep amassing in the junk drawer. Toothpicks for that someday party, for the martinis that don’t get made, much less shaken or stirred.

I could so easily be an alcoholic, although that is sure to offend those who are, I mean I understand it is nothing to be desired. But that Some Thing could be valued for so much more than just what it is! Just the thought of it, it as a mathematical absolute, caught between upright lines, the smell of it, the weight and color of it, its infinite varieties to suit weather and mood, or to subtly alter them through alchemy. Grow the bean high, and on this side of the mountain, cold mist in the morning, bright sun in the afternoon, each and every one under the gaze of the enigmatic swarth of the black eyes of Juan Valdez.

Juan is my muse.

My brain does this, goes absolutely serpentine before the sensual or in this sad case, on this sad day, its loss. Booze or coffee, does it matter? Pick green bud beans gently in Costa Rica, say, or Guatemala, Colombia, and Nicaragua. The farmers, how hard it is to think of a farmer of coffee. Well, the farmers are as restricted as their family of two old, old trees, or they are middling farmers, the progressive cooperative community, pooling and pooling, those scary folk! And the coffee bean farmer is also a rich bastard, a man on top of a pyramid, a plantation and all that that might imply. Dealers everywhere, in every twist on habituation, are like these coffee bean farmers. And there is always a ghost of a man in a poncho, disappearing on his mule.

The paper says there is a glut of coffee this year and that they are all suffering. Some growers mix their beans so as to sell more, destroying what might have been purity, curse them, some of the purist processing their own, bless them, washing, drying, and removing pulp, finally roasting according to dark ancient family recipes.
For the sake of heaven, I had reached the point of not caring. Just get it to me fresh, I wanted to scream, before you infuse some insipid yuppie flavor in them – amaretto, almond, Irish cream. The wannabes.

The brewing was left local, the brewing was crucial, the brewing was up to us. Clean, cold, fresh water and the simplest of method. Even bleary eyed and hooked on the joe for good, the addict does it right. Sliding down into a subterranean bar midmorning for an early tonic, the ravaged alcoholic weighs, turns the glass in hand, listens to the ice chink. The coffee junkie goes for the heavy white diner cup and saucer, or for mugs testifying to visits here and there [where, in faith, I drank the bean, comrades], and proffers nose to steam, red line eyeballs the murky depths, anticipates.

Between half-completing an unaccredited degree program at a Podunk university chosen specifically to shame my parents, I worked a few years and lived with women who advertised for roommates. The first woman was Edith. Because her parents owned the house in which she lived, two bedrooms downstairs, the upstairs mysteriously closed off, a kitchen to share, a living room that would be off limits, a nice garden, lovely street on the bus route, I interviewed with them and not her. That would strike me as odd now. My bedroom, complete with a non-functional grand piano, my own phone, and a was an add-on to the house, with a separated entrance through the garden that remained nice and lovely throughout it all. That is the nice and lovely thing about things. How they just remain, if we will let them. Anyway, her father had some sort of distinguished past during which he had translated the Bible as part of some grand ecumenical academic movement. I would remember the details today, being interested in grand academic stuff but just then I wanted a cheap room and a nice roommate. He had a bulbous nose and wore cardigans. Her mother I recollect not at all, therefore I pronounce mousy.

Edith was an accountant. She was oval. She was oblong. She looked as if her hair were cut along the outline of an authentic 19th century porridge bowl. Edith was strict. She told me not to touch her food and drink, to never enter her room. But she was also kind in that she did things such as shop for me, a difficulty without a car. She would not shop with me, but she would shop for me. We went together most Saturdays to the Laundromat. She ate TV dinners every night, washed down with lots and lots of Kool-Aid. She studied something vague every evening in the living room, some course work from a community college. She had lots of books and manuals spread out on her sofa.

I worked a 7 to 3 shift and loved playing around in the garden, walking in the neighborhood, fighting the nesting female impulses, the desire to cook for two, to clean, rearrange, fix. Sweat streaming in rivulets down my scarlet face one July afternoon after a session of tousling with vines, I poured a big old glass of what had to be lemonade Kool-Aid from her ratty green pitcher, chugged some and about died on the spot. There is nothing inherently wrong with chugging cold cheap lemony vodka but this could not be a good sign, thought I, ever on the ball. Emboldened, I opened her bedroom door. There were at least one hundred pairs of dirty old lady style underwear strewn all over the floor, and bullets, lots of bullets. Vodka, vodka everywhere, the drops already drunk. Mostly empties, plastic bottles. Too scared to stay, I backed out, hearing the creepy crawly music creepy crawly movies play.

I tried to refill the crappy green pitcher with her special blend but it was so late in the afternoon, would the temperature be off? Would the ratio of Kool-Aid [wait, I also found some Crystal Lite, O, for the love of God, Edith, which one was in here?] match her discerning palate? Would my face give all away? Had I let too much fresh air into her dirty panty, well bulleted bedroom? Did I have time to get away and when would this bad movie music leave me alone?

She knew. Hid in my bedroom, sitting stupidly behind the enormous piano, fingering its silenced keys, I could hear her banging things around, grousing. But silence set in, Edith studied her vodka, I slipped under my covers, and said a stupid benign prayer.

I had the next day off. I had sex and a sauna with my married friend Phil and his wife Marion in the morning. My friend Baber and I met up with some folks for big, cold carrot juices at a nearby health food store, I bought things I could not afford but that felt good and witchy – seaweedy and blue-clay-from-specific-earth kind of things – got on my bus, hooted and hollered my way home. Sex was fun in those days and the good feelings could be stretched to take in several days. Once home, I would make some witchy seaweedy tea and decide whether to fashion food or a facial mask from the clay. It cost the same either way. I caught the phone on what must have been its twelth ring. No good with keys, I was jumbling, missing the lock because in there was a person who so badly wanted to talk that they were willing to ring, ring, ring.

It was Edith’s boss, a nice enough sounding man, though definitely with the same ovoid tendencies. A CPA, I suppose. She had called in sick to work, was she better, could he expect her tomorrow, could he speak with her? Honest to a huge degree of fault, Mr. CPA, I don’t know if she is sick in the way you mean, I pray she is not here, and that, yes, you will see her tomorrow. Speak with her, why no, I thought it better to leave sleeping dogs lie.

She drove her car into the house about an hour later. Smashed the windshield to pieces, broke her nose. The house damage I am unable to recall. Edith wore a garish red embroidered pancho. We visited the hospital; Her parents showed up. “You’ve lasted longer than anyone,” was the cold day old meatloaf praise of her father.

**********
My first serious girlfriend had huge perfect breasts. Something of a problem for her at times, a little uncomfortable. She finally found a front loader, one that left her breasts looking smooth and natural and, she hoped, perky, under the tightest clothes. But I loved that stiff wireless white garment more than even she, liberating the flesh, loosening the five hooks and eyes, burying my face in pounds of springing soft creamy teat. That is the last time I remember things making sense and that was over 30 years ago. The days of gathering together, of holding her pressed flesh in my cupping hands, flicking her excited pink nipples. Somewhere after my hands held expensive cameras and clicked on images without merit, important people wrote me checks and praise, but I had nothing left of the old exuberance in my fingertips. I just took pictures of things, always looking for her breasts to pop out of that ignominious constraint into bright freedom. Failing to find them, I wrote. And like all writers of fair success, I have come under attack at long last.
Your honors, the peanuts in the gallery, my friends and foes, my journalistic toe-taggers, I claim the Belle of Amherst.

I have imagined her breasts.

Miss Dickinson, dearest stricken Emily, wrote in what the ersatz experts call fascicles, described as a building toward refinement. I call it fire, hesitancy, and total destruction of the evidence. That which only showed progress, the picked and boiled rubbery chicken ribs of her affairs, were ground to cinder. But the polished white neck and knuckle bones that held her careful structures, these were penciled in twice, then inked over with care, before she flew down stairs and up stairs, insane and out, the earlier goods to destroy. You must see why she speaks so strongly for me, and the honor in that, the recluse come out to defend the misunderstood?

Don’t scare her off.






**One day, I should write about Teacher's Lounges. They are strange fixtures, at once a sanctuary and a black hole of depression. Archaeologists will furrow their future brows at the odd collections of Mister Coffee machines, take out menus, decrepit computers, and mind-boggling stacks of microwave-proof plastic food storage containers.

These rooms are magnets for single serving 5 ounce cans of Chicken of the Sea tuna packed in water, also for any hot beverage or foodstuff that starts out as a dehydrated powder -- hot chocolate is always a favorite, as are dehydrated noodle soups. Teachers' Lounges are the final resting place for stained and slightly odd-smelling mugs bearing humorous inscriptions or high praise (My dog ate my lesson plans; Teachers: Opening Minds, Inspiring Hearts!) -- and for reams of outdated pedagogical directives stuffed into 3-ring binders, all carefully titled with a hand held embosser Label Maker.